The WordPress framework is free. Why do you want to pay someone $3000 to set you up when you can do it yourself. I am not that impressed by it, myself. Do not care for PHP.
It is a word intensive site. I am not technically adroit?
PHP is okay, depending on what you need it for. Personally I prefer C#, but if the server is Linux, PHP is a very good alternative. I use PHP, PERL, C#, and VB.net about an even amount of time. Again, it depends on the server and what the client already has in place.